Silver Hands
by GabbeAnela
Summary: Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect. It's only human. This is the story of a rat.


Peter Pettigrew

'_You're weak Pettigrew, you're father was weak and you're weaker!'_

My mother once told me that my father had left us to side with Grindelwald. As a child and later on, adolescent, I wondered. Why would somebody go to a side that was sure to fail? In all of the comics I read the good guys would always win. So why?

'_You're pathetic! You hide behind the biggest bullies in the playground!'_

The first people I told about my father were my best friends: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and James Potter. I didn't have to worry about being shun because they all shared their own dark secrets.

'_You're not even worth looking at Peter!'_

I remember that back at school, my friends often underestimated me. And why wouldn't they? They were the smartest, the handsomest, the funniest and I was just the weak little tagalong, too insignificant to notice. When I was greeted, however rare it was, it would always be: 'Aren't you Sirius' friend?' or 'Hey, can you get me a date with James?' I never did understand why they kept me around.

'_You fool! I don't know why I even put up with you!'_

After Hogwarts, I found myself involve with the fight against Voldemort: a dark wizard who wanted to prune all of the _unworthy_ wizards and witches. Nobody ever did ask my opinion about it. They just assumed that if James, Remus and Sirius were for it then I would be. We were a group. Four peas in a pod.

'_Peter?'_

After one particular Order meeting where I offered myself up for a mission but got denied because I wasn't "the most suitable person" I found myself in a bar, drinking away my lifelong sorrows. Why did my father leave for a losing side? Why wasn't I ever good enough?

'_WORMTAIL?'_

At 2 in the morning I found myself without a care in the world, drunk as I'd ever been. Stumbling out of the bar I was confronted with masked people taunting and spitting at me. I didn't care. Maybe, I'd die. Then they'd see who the most suitable person was. I was bitter and weak and thought I was dying. The masked people apparated me away from the front of the bar.

'_You're weak!'_

We were in a dark room. I heard an unnatural hissing and I turned around to see the man who my friends so adamantly fought against. Voldemort. He gave me promises of power. Beyond my imagination. I would no longer be the weak baby who my friends all tolerated but never took seriously.

'_You always were a rat!'_

I said yes. And as I went back to the Order and talked to all my friends I felt superior. I was fooling all of them. Vague suspicions of a traitor were thrown in several meetings but nobody ever did suspect poor, little Peter. I was a joke to them. But it only made me feel more powerful. I was fooling the man who was supposed to be as powerful as Merlin: Albus Dumbledore.

'_You're a bloody joke Peter.'_

Then came the final test. Did I belong to the people who considered me weak, or to the people who praised me for my spying genius? It was an easy answer. So when I was asked where the Potters were located I answered without hesitation. I was powerful and they were weak. It was as simple as that.

'_You're worse than a Slytherin!'_

The next day Sirius confronted me, threatening and asking me why I betrayed the people they thought I considered family. Power and rage consumed me. He could not yell at me! I was the better one now! So I turned the tables. Acted like the Slytherin I had become. I asked why he betrayed James and Lily. And then I blew up the street. My first blood. And it felt good.

'_You're lower than the dirt on my shoes!'_

I ran until I found a nice suburban family who stayed out of the main fight against Voldemort and the Order. I was happy for nearly 10 years. As a rat I was not the person who had betrayed my friends nor was I the weak baby my friends thought I was. I knew that people were after me: people who once praised me but I was hidden under the guise of a family pet. Not worth anyone's notice.

'_Worrrrrmmmmyyyyy?'_

Than he came. Harry James Potter. And he was the perfect mixture of James and Lily. James' roguish good looks with Lily's stunning eyes and compassion. That was the first time I felt guilt. Not enough for me to realize what it was but enough to stun me for a moment. And as the years went by I realized that this boy, this unspectacular boy who did not have James' amazing transfiguration abilities or Lily's instincts for potion-making, really was Voldemort's match.

'_Come out, come out wherever you are.'_

Then Sirius escaped the prison I sent him to. I knew he was after me. So I ran faking my own death to avoid a real one. Finally I was caught. I saw Harry's accusation and anger in his eyes as he stared down at my weakened body. It was like Lily and James had come up from the grave to blame me.

'_You can't hide forever.'_

Fortunately, I escaped. Then I ran, further than I had before until I found Voldemort, weaker than before but there. Truly not dead. I brought him back to corporeal form and expected promises of riches and power only to find that I was treated worse than my friends ever treated me.

'_You're a fool Wormtail, a fool!'_

And I discovered that though my friends considered me weak, I was weaker. For I had betrayed them to gain power. I was a fool after all. And in that basement, where Harry and his friends laid I felt that tiny smidgen of guilt grow. I didn't even try to stop the silver hand from attacking my neck and choking me. I was thankful. Thankful that in death I could finally not be the man who I had tried to run away from for so long.

'_You are not forgiven.'_

And in my final moments of life I finally realized why my father left a good life for a losing one.


End file.
